TY - JOUR TI - Natural variation of quantitative traits for consolidated bioprocessing of cellulosic ethanol in Neurospora crassa DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T30G3NWK PY - 2017 AB - Current methods for converting plant biomass to value-added products such as ethanol are expensive and time consuming, requiring thermochemical pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, microbial fermentation, and product recovery. These steps are classically performed separately with different organisms used for enzyme production, hexose fermentation, and pentose fermentation, which further increases production costs. To achieve cost-effective conversion of lignocellulose to ethanol these steps must be consolidated into a one-step reaction where biomass is hydrolyzed and fermented directly. This consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) requires an organism capable of hydrolytic enzyme production and fermentation of hexose and pentose sugars. The model filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa possesses all of these capabilities, making it a strong candidate for CBP. Therefore, we sought to characterize natural variation among populations of N. crassa and assess if selective breeding would provide a reliable route to generating elite strains for bioethanol production. We observed significant variation in natural and lab generated strains, and demonstrated improvements in fermentation in a single generation. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis pointed to genomic locations underlying the observed phenotypic variance in saccharification of cellulose and fermentation of ethanol within one of the populations. Finally, we demonstrated direct fermentation of untreated biomass (Miscanthus giganteus) by N. crassa, highlighting its potential for CBP and demonstrating that natural strains are more proficient at utilization of biomass than the laboratory reference strain. KW - Biology KW - Biomass energy LA - eng ER -